
class JXJLAM. 

Book.__ + Jr_L1L 



SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT 



CONSTIPATION, 



PLAINLY TREATED. 



BRIGHT'S DISEASE. How Persons Threatened or Afflicted 
with this Disease Ought to Live. By J. F. Edwards, m.d. I61210, 96 
pages. Cloth. Price 75 cents. 
The author gives, in a readable manner, those instructions in relation 

to Hygiene, Clothing, Eating, Bathing, etc., etc., which, when carried out, 

will prolong the life of those suffering from this disease, and a neglect of 

which costs annually many lives. 

WHAT IS SAID OP IT. 

" Every one should read this excellent little volume, in which Dr. Ed- 
wards describes and defines the disease." — Providence Journal. 

u This little book is prepared, not in the interest of the doctor, but of the 
sufferer." — Louisville Christian Observer. 

M A very valuable work."— New York Commercial Advertiser. 

"Plainly written, and ought to be of great use."— Philadelphia Ledger. 

" What should be done and avoided are clearly shown, and the informa- 
tion communicated is of general interest."— Albany Journal. 

" Plain and straightforward."— Baltimore Sun. 

"An admirable and much needed book."— Catholic Mirror, Baltimore. 

"A remarkably able and useful treatise upon an obscure and vital sub- 
ject." — North American. 

"Should be read carefully by every one."— The Voice, Albany, N. Y. 

"It encourages the sufferer as well as instructs him."— Congregationalism 

" An intelligent work."— Toledo Blade. 

"A clear statement of some of the rules of life, which will insure the 
longest lease of life, and the greatest measure of health."— Prov. Press. 

" A satisfactory treatise." — Indianapolis Sentinel. 

"Of especial interest and importance, and should be universally known." 
— Lutheran Observer. 

" Will be eagerly welcomed by thousands. The malady is one of a pe- 
culiarly insidious character, and it may be asserted with confidence that 
this book will be very valuable for medical men as well as laymen. It 
is written in good, plain English, and with clearness." — StoddarVs Review. 

"Simple, practical directions that can be easily obeyed."— Bookseller 
and Stationer. 

" The considerations presented in this little volume are of the greatest 
moment." — N. E. Journal of Education. 

" To those for whom it is designed, this manual can hardly fail to be a 
God-send."— Buffalo Courier. 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. JUST READY. 

CONSTIPATION. Plainly Treated and Relieved without the 
Use of Drugs. By Joseph F. Edwards. 16mo. Cloth. Price 75 cents. 



CONSTIPATION, 



PLAINLY TREATED, 



AND 



RELIEVED WITHOUTTHEUSE OF DRUGS 



EY 

JOSEPH F. EDWARDS, M.D., 

Author of " How a Person Threatened or Afflicted with Bright's Disease 
Ouglit to Live." 



SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
PRESLEY BLAKISTON, 

IOI2 WALNUT STREET. 
I88l. 



tf& 




!£>1 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year i38i, by 

PRESLEY BLAKISTON, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



44112 % 

KEB 38 1901 



Press of WM. P. FELL & CO., 

1220-1224 Sansom Street. 



CONTENTS. 



Introductory, 9 

Part I. — The Functions of the Stomach and 

Bowels, 15 

Part II. — Necessity for Daily Evacuations, 23 

Part III. — How to Procure Daily Evacua- 
tions Without the Use of Drugs, 36 



CONSTIPATION, 

PLAINLY TREATED. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

"How are your bowels; are they regular ?" 
"Oh, yes, Doctor, they are pretty fair." "Are 
they opened daily ? ' ' " Oh, no ! ' ' " How often 
are they moved?" "Well, sometimes every two 
or three days, and sometimes not for a week." 
The foregoing conversation, which I venture to 
say has repeatedly taken place between every phy- 
sician in active practice and many of his patients, 
is the author's excuse for giving the following 
pages to the public. 

It is astonishing, and I may say, incomprehen- 
sible, but nevertheless it is a dismal fact, that 
even among intelligent persons, little or no at- 
tention is paid to this all important matter of 
regular and free evacuations from the bowels. I 

recall to mind one striking case of an exceedingly 
b 9 



10 CONSTIPATION, 

intelligent lady of sixty, who told me that she 
had never, throughout her long life, given a second 
thought to her bowels ; when she had the inclina- 
tion to have them moved, she generally, but not 
always, would seek the water closet ; if the desire 
did not manifest itself, well, no matter, she did 
not care ; and sometimes, she told me, a week or 
more would elapse without one single evacuation. 
This is not an isolated case. I venture to say, 
without fear of contradiction, that there are more 
persons in the world who are costive (generally 
through their own fault, or, at least, through 
want of information on the subject), by a large 
majority-, than are regular. I have now under my 
care a woman who tells me that she frequently 
passes three weeks without a single evacuation. 
I set myself to work to induce regular daily pas- 
sages, and, although well advanced in years, with 
her stomach and liver much disordered from this 
costive habit, the improvement in her appearance 
and in her general health has been marvelous. 
The Hon. Eli K. Price once told me of a gentle- 



PLAINLY TREATED. 11 

man, eighty years of age, who, possessed of an 
elegant constitution, seemed to bid fair to become 
a centenarian, but who, in course of conversation, 
said that his only trouble was that his bowels 
were not regular. Why do you not make them 
so, asked Mr. Price. "Why, how can I?" was 
the answer; " they will not act; how can I make 
them do what they will not do ? ' ' Eat bran 
bread, fruit, and so on, was the advice given. 
And in commenting on this case, Mr. Price said 
to me: "just think of it; there was a man who 
had lived in this world for over eighty years, and 
in all that time had failed to learn how to properly 
care for his bowels." 

I have been led to regard regularity of evacua- 
tions from the bowels as one of the most import- 
ant elements in the preservation of health and 
the promotion of longevity; and on the other 
hand, costiveness or constipation as one of the 
most active agents in the production of many of 
the diseases not dependent upon the presence of 
a special poison for their origin, and of producing 



12 CONSTIPATION, 

such a vitiated and disordered condition of the 
system, as to nurture and favor the development 
of diseases even which do require these special 
poisons. Therefore, I have become firmly con- 
vinced that if human nature thoroughly understood 
and appreciated the great necessity of regular 
evacuations, and would practice such simple rules 
as would secure them, much disease and discom- 
fort would be avoided, and a better state of gene- 
ral health and longer life would result. 

Therefore, it is my purpose in this book, to en- 
deavor to demonstrate, in easily understood lan- 
guage, using the plainest and simplest words only, 
the great importance, I might even say the abso- 
lute necessity of this regularity, and to point out 
certain hygienic rules which will insure it, leaving 
the medicinal side of the question to the intelligent 
physician j I emphasize intelligent, because there 
is no malady (I use the word advisedly) so diffi- 
cult to overcome and so trying to the patience 
both of the physician and his patient as an obstin- 
ate case of constipation; while at the same time, 



PLAINLY TREATED. 13 

the indiscriminate and unintelligent use of medi- 
cine, instead of relieving the constipation, only- 
serves to confirm the costive habit and render the 
cure more tedious and difficult. Therefore, let 
me tell you now (and I will tell you again further 
on, and give you my reasons then) that you will 
enjoy better health if you never take a single dose 
of medicine to relieve constipation, without the 
advice of your physician. Ever since the days of 
the apostle St. Thomas (I think it was) and I dare 
say even before his time, human nature has been 
skeptical, more especially the intelligent side of it, 
and hence has generally refused to believe any 
statement implicitly for which it did not have a 
good and satisfactory reason. Therefore, I am 
going to give you the why and the wherefore of 
every fact which I enunciate, and will not ask you 
to take my word for anything, but to intelligently 
understand and thoroughly appreciate all the ins 
and outs of this question of constipation. In 
order that I may do this, I will divide this little 
book into three parts: — 



14 CONSTIPATION, 

Part First will tell you about the functions, the 
duties of the stomach and bowels. 

Part Second will demonstrate the great necessity 
for daily full and free evacuations from the bowels. 

While Part Third will give you such rules of 
life as will tend to produce them. 

I trust these few pages may prove of benefit to 
some one. I am sure the melancholy, despond- 
ent and almost crazy dyspeptic will derive some 
benefit from their perusal, while the suffering vic- 
tim of hemorrhoids or piles will find in them 
great relief from his agony. The bilious person 
will find a means of relieving the engorgement of 
his liver, if this organ be not absolutely diseased 
in its structure, while those tortured with splitting 
headaches will experience much relief by following 
the directions contained herein. With the hope 
that the poor sufferers from the various ills pro- 
duced and maintained by this hydra-headed 
monster, constipation, may experience relief from 
the perusal of this little book, I sympathetically 
dedicate its pages to them. 



PLAINLY TREATED. 15 



PART FIRST. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STOMACH AND BOWELS. 

Many of my readers have no doubt seen the 
little wagon belonging to an establishment for 
dyeing articles of clothing, etc., which used to go 
about our city a few years ago, bearing the curious 
inscription on its sides: "We live to dye, and we 
dye to live." Well, let me here suggest a similar 
curious motto: "We live to eat, and we eat to 
live." This is a self-evident proposition. You 
all know that it would be utterly impossible to 
live unless you eat. Just as it is necessary to sup- 
ply an engine with coal in order that you may 
generate steam, so it is an essential of life that 
you should supply a sufficiency of wholesome food 
to your digestive organs, in order that they may 
generate the so-called vital power, which enables 
your various organs to perform their different 
functions, the sum total of whose actions consti- 



16 CONSTIPATION, 

tutes life. The organs mainly interested in the 
reception of food and its preparation and trans- 
formation into a condition which renders it capa- 
ble of supplying nourishment to and repairing the 
waste of the various organs and tissues of the body 
are known to the physician under the comprehen- 
sive term of the gastro-intestinal tract. Com- 
mencing at the mouth, this tract or canal termi- 
nates at the anus. For the sake of familiar 
illustration, let me compare this canal to a rubber 
hose. Suppose you take an ordinary hose or 
rubber tube, about one and a half inches in diam- 
eter, and about thirty feet long. Imagine one 
end of this hose to be attached to the back part 
of your mouth, and you have the commencement 
of the passage way into the stomach. The food 
received into your mouth passes back into this 
tube, and, after descending it for about one foot, 
it reaches a point at which the tube has become 
very much distended, so as to form a bag, so to 
speak, about ten inches long and four or five 
inches wide, and capable of holding from one to 



PLAINLY TREATED. 17. 

two quarts; this bag is your stomach. At the 
right end of this bag the tube narrows down again 
to near its original size in the throat, and for a 
length of twenty-five feet lies coiled up in your 
abdomen, constituting the small intestine or 
bowel; now, it again becomes slightly enlarged 
(not nearly so much as when it formed your 
stomach), and in this enlarged condition con- 
tinues for a distance of about four or five feet, 
to terminate in your fundament at the anus. It 
is the function of your stomach to receive into 
it your food, and to commence to digest it. Some 
articles of food are completely digested in the 
stomach, and are absorbed directly from it into 
the blood and carried by this fluid to nourish the 
system. Other articles are only partly digested 
by the gastric fluid in the stomach, and after 
undergoing this partial disintegration and trans- 
formation, they are carried out of the stomach 
into the small intestines, that portion of the rubber 
tube where it has become narrowed, and meeting 
here with new juices, their complete digestion is 



18 CONSTIPATION. 

effected, and, transformed into a milky fluid, they 
are taken up by small vessels provided for the 
purpose, and carried to the blood, prepared to 
become part of that fluid and to repair the wear 
and tear of tissue. The stomach and bowels seem 
to have the peculiar property of selecting from 
the food taken in only that which is suitable and 
appropriate to nourish the body, and of rejecting 
the rest. Just as in coal you will often find cer- 
tain impurities, not fit to generate heat, so in food 
there are certain elements not suitable to produce 
vital force, and these elements, refused by the 
digestive and absorbing organs, are carried on by 
the bowels, further and further along this tube, 
until they are finally expelled from the body in 
the act of defecation. Again, there are certain 
vessels distributed all over the body, whose duty 
it is to gather up the dead and useless particles of 
tissue, whose work has been performed, and whose 
continued presence in the system would be not 
only unnecessary, but absolutely injurious. You 
probably know that every act of life, even the 



PLAINLY TREATED. 19 

most unconscious, is performed at the expense of 
some particles of the tissue of your body. Each 
act causes the destruction of those particles which 
have been engaged in the performance of that 
act, just as the generation of heat in a stove causes 
the destruction of the coal which has been instru- 
mental in its production. I use the word de- 
struction here in its liberal sense for the sake of 
illustration. You all know, of course, that matter 
is indestructible, and that what seems to be de- 
struction is in reality only a change of condition. 
So that these particles of your body are not in 
reality destroyed, but are so altered in their com- 
position by the different vital acts to whose per- 
formance they have given their power, that they 
are no longer fit to constitute a part of your body, 
and by one of those beautiful laws of nature, they 
must be removed, to furnish in turn nourishment 
to the various articles of vegetable life, during 
which process their composition is again so 
changed that they are once more rendered fit to 
nourish the human body. So that, wonderful as 



20 CONSTIPATION, 

it may seem, some of the particles of your brain 
which will be used up in reading and understand- 
ing this little book, and which will be removed 
from your body in a disgusting state of decompo- 
sition, foul and unclean, and not fit to be touched, 
may, in the course of years, again find their way 
into your brain, through the agency of the food 
you eat, and may again be used up in reading a 
book, of which I may, perchance, happen to 
be the author. These particles being unfit to 
longer remain in the body, must be gotten rid of. 
The vessels of which I have spoken, distributed 
over the body, take them up and carry them to 
the various eliminatory organs, whose duty it is 
to remove them from the body, among which I 
may mention the lungs, kidneys, etc. Prominent 
among them stands the bowels ; the narrow por- 
tion of the rubber tube. These vessels constantly 
acting, bring the dead and decayed matter to the 
bowels and empty it into them. They are the 
drain pipes, so to speak, coming from the different 
rooms in the different houses, and carrying the 



PLAINLY TREATED. 21 

waste into the common sewer, with which the 
bowels might be not inaptly compared. This 
matter is received and stored up in the bowels as 
waste matter is in your privy wells, until the 
proper time comes for discharging it from the 
body ; and let me here anticipate myself by tell- 
ing you that the proper time is once a day. The 
bowels not only play a vital part in the drama of 
life, but, if I may be allowed a literary liberty, 
they have also a mechanical function, so to speak. 
Your kidneys are constantly removing from the 
blood the elements whose combination forms 
urine. Now, if this urine trickled constantly 
from your body, it would be very annoying. 
Your clothing would be soiled, you would smell 
bad, and the surface of your body would be ex- 
coriated and made sore by the acid in your urine. 
So your all-wise Creator furnished you with a 
bladder, which is simply a reservoir, a receptacle, 
as it were, for the urine. Here it accumulates, 
drop by drop, until, the bladder being distended 
to a certain extent, an impression is made on the 



22 CONSTIPATION, 

nerves ramifying over its surface, and this im- 
pression conveyed to the brain, the desire to 
urinate is there originated ; and so, in obedience 
to this desire, your bladder is emptied, and thus 
so much dead and decayed matter is removed 
from your bodies. The same thing occurs with 
your bowels. The dead matter accumulates 
therein, as in the bladder, and finally, after reach- 
ing a certain amount, the desire to evacuate it 
arises, and so the refuse is removed. But let me 
tell you that, differing from the case of your 
bladder, if this desire to evacuate the bowels be 
neglected, the nerves will become so blunted, and 
the muscular wall of the intestine or rubber tube 
so torpid, that eventually, not only will the desire 
not arise of itself, that is to say, naturally, but it 
will be almost an impossibility for you to force an 
evacuation. You now understand enough of the 
functions of the gastro-intestinal tract or rubber 
tube to enable you to understand the remarks I 
will have to make on the necessity of daily evacu- 
ations from it, and how you can procure them. 



PLAINLY TREATED. 23 



PART SECOND. 



NECESSITY FOR DAILY EVACUATIONS. 

Every good housekeeper knows and appreciates 
the necessity of semi-annual house cleanings. If 
she does not scrub the floors before laying the 
carpets in the fall, and wash the paint, she does 
not consider that she has a pure and clean house. 
Every maid of all work has a certain day on which 
she must sweep the parlor, another for the dining 
room, and so on, and every day she must dust all 
the rooms. Windows must be washed and rooms 
aired. And all this work for what ! In order 
that the house may be cleaned of its impurities. 

All large cities vie with each other in perfect- 
ing their systems of drainage ; and for what ? In 
order that this very dead and decayed animal tis- 
sue of which I have been telling you may be re- 
moved and prevented from contaminating the air 
which we breathe, the water we drink, and the 



24 CONSTIPATION, 

food we eat. New cities are considered unhealthy, 
and why? Because, their drainage being imperfect, 
much of this refuse matter remains, to poison the 
inhabitants. An intelligent person going to live 
in the country will seek sloping ground ; and high 
locations are generally considered the healthiest ; 
why? Because, according to natural laws, drain- 
age will be better, and the sloping ground will 
carry away from the vicinity of the houses that 
dead and decayed matter which your bodies are 
continually giving off. Now, does it not seem 
strange to you, when you stop to reflect on it, that 
intelligent men and women will go to all this 
trouble and expense to remove deleterious matter 
from their company, when it has once left their 
bodies, and yet so many of them will go on from 
day to day, unconcernedly performing their 
various duties of life, seemingly ignorant of the 
fact that an enormous quantity of foul, rotten and 
unclean matter is within their bodies, poisoning 
the very foundation of their lives, and sowing the 
seeds of disease and premature death? Does it not 



PLAINLY TREATED. 25 

seem incredible? Oh ! it is a terrible thing, this 
ignorance of our own bodies. Was it not Pope 
who said, "the noblest study of mankind is man." 
I do sincerely hope the day is not far distant when 
the study of physiology, in its elementary form, at 
least, will constitute, as it ought, one of the main 
points in the education of our boys and girls. 
Ignorance of the functions of our bodies consti- 
tutes a most prolific source of disease and misery. 
How can a person be expected to treat his various 
organs properly, if he is utterly ignorant of the 
way in which he should treat them. 

This trouble of constipation is very frequently 
contracted by children when growing up. Their 
parents before them have not been taught to 
value the necessity of regular evacuations, hence 
they have not impressed it on their children, and 
so these boys and girls, when, in the midst of play 
and amusement, the desire to defecate comes upon 
them, resist it by all the means in their power, 
rather than have their recreation interfered with, 

and only yield obedience to it when its commands 
c 



26 CONSTIPATION, 

become irresistible. Constantly and repeatedly 
refusing to listen to this voice of nature demand- 
ing a purification, a removal of poisonous matter, 
the bowels finally become exhausted, as I have 
told you, and a costive habit is established. Not 
being taught differently in childhood, they do not 
consider it injurious, when they grow to maturity, to 
allow their bowels to remain unopened for days at 
a time, and they, in turn, neglect this all-import- 
ant matter in their children. 

Dr. Lionel S. Beale, of England, says, in his 
valuable and practical work on "Slight Ail- 
ments," "You will find that people who suffer 
from habitual constipation, and those who have a 
regular but quantitatively deficient action, com- 
plain of certain unpleasant sensations. Although 
there is no organic disease, and if you examined 
every part of such person you would not find the 
least indication of the slightest structural change, 
the almost constant discomfort many of these 
people have to endure is really great ; and not 
only so, but various more or less serious conditions 



PLAINLY TREATED. 27 

may result from habitual constipation. In this 
way that unpleasant condition known as hypo- 
chondriasis in the male and as a form of hysteria 
in the female, very often commences. There is 
even the possibility that a condition bordering 
upon insanity may be brought about by long con- 
tinued improper action of the bowels." 

Even your servant who attends to your furnace 
fire understands that he must clean out the ashes 
if he desires a good fire. If he allows the ashes to 
remain he may pile on the coal, but he will get no 
heat; the coal cannot burn, it cannot do its work, 
because the furnace is choked up with dead and 
useless coal, in the shape of ashes. The contents 
of the bowels are the human ashes. If you do not 
remove them, you may eat, but your food will 
not properly nourish you, for the evident reason 
that the vital functions necessary for the transfor- 
mation of this food into nourishment suitable for 
the body are so interfered with by this mass of 
decaying animal matter within you that they can- 
not be properly performed. Any one who has 



28 CONSTIPATION, 

been constipated for some days, and then has an 
evacuation, cannot help but be struck by the ter- 
ribly offensive odor of the passage, showing to 
what an extent decomposition has taken place. 
Do you know that the most prolific cause of 
typhoid fever is emanations, in the shape of foul 
gases, from privies and water-closets, these gases 
being generated by the decomposition of the mat- 
ter you have passed from your bowels? Do you 
also know that typhoid fever is characterized by 
the presence of small ulcers or running sores in 
small glands, which are situated in your intestines 
or bowels ? Now, does it seem out of place to im- 
agine that the retention of a large mass of this 
same rotten matter in your bowels, and its under- 
going decomposition there, and liberating these 
same poisonous gases, acting on these same little 
glands, might produce this same typhoid fever, 
or, at least, a condition very similar to it ? Do 
you know what hemorrhoids or piles are ? They 
are an enlargement, an engorgement with blood, 
of the small veins in the vicinity of the anus. 



PLAINLY TREATED. 29 

Now, can you not understand that the presence 
of a large amount of this poisonous matter in the 
lower part of the bowels — matter which ought not 
to be there, and which, consequently, is a foreign 
body — will so irritate the delicate lining of your 
bowels — a lining as delicate as that which coats 
the inside of your mouth and cheeks, with which 
it is both continuous and identical — as to cause an 
extra amount of blood to flow into its vessels, and 
this costive habit continuing, will eventually pro- 
duce a chronic engorgement or congestion of 
these vessels, and you have all the sufferings and 
tortures of piles, as a result of this constipation? 
In women the womb occupies a position directly 
in front of the bowels, from which it is separated 
only by a thin membrane. Now, can you not 
easily perceive how this congestion of the bowels 
will also have a tendency to cause too much blood 
to flow into the womb, and to produce an en- 
gorgement of it, with all its attendant suffering ? 
Again, the womb is movable; it is suspended in 
the cavity of the abdomen by ligaments or cords, 



30 CONSTIPATION, 

sufficiently stout and strong to keep it in its pro- 
per position when the organ is healthy ; but sup- 
pose this costive habit so irritates the womb as to 
cause a great, an excessive flow of blood into it ; 
of course it will be heavier than natural, the in- 
crease in weight being directly in proportion to 
the increased flow of blood. Being so much 
heavier than usual, the cords are unable to hold 
it in position, it drops down, from its own weight, 
and we have constipation, producing all the mis- 
fortunes of falling of the womb. Still more \ this 
constant irritation in the bowels keeps up a con- 
stant excess of blood in the lining membrane of 
the bowels, and you ultimately have a chronic 
inflammation of this tube set up, which, besides 
causing much pain and uneasiness in the abdo- 
men, interferes with the proper digestion and ab- 
sorption of your food, and hence all the phenom- 
ena of nutrition are impeded. 

This mass of dead tissue remaining in the 
bowels undergoes decomposition, and being un- 
able to escape in the natural way, some portion 



PLAINLY TREATED. 31 

of it is re-absorbed by the vessels ramifying over 
the surface of the bowels, and is carried into the 
blood, so that this fluid, when going its rounds 
to nourish the various tissues and organs, carries 
with it some of this poisonous material, and so 
poisoned blood gives poisoned nourishment to 
your various organs and parts. 

A prominent physician of our city once com- 
pared the brain and stomach to the two balls or 
ends of a dumb-bell, while the nervous com- 
munication between them was likened to the 
shaft of a dumb-bell. This illustration he used to 
demonstrate the intimate connection which exists 
between the brain and the stomach, through the 
agency of the nervous system. The bowels, as 
you now understand, are simply a prolongation of 
the stomach ; they are most intimately connected 
with the brain by a large number of nerves. In 
children one of the commonest causes of convul- 
sions is constipation, and the presence of worms 
in the bowels ; the worms acting as an irritant, a 
foreign body, precisely the same as a collection 



32 CONSTIPATION, 

of dead and decomposed matter does, will cause 
an irritation in the bowels, and this irritation, 
acting through the nerves by what is known to 
physicians as reflex action, will so irritate the 
brain as to give rise to many disordered phenom- 
ena on its part. Can you not, therefore, under- 
stand how easy it will be for constipation to pro- 
duce those violent headaches to which costive 
people are so subject? 

The liver is one of the largest and one of the 
most important organs in your body. How many 
hundred times have you heard your friends say, 
" I have a bilious attack ? " These bilious attacks 
are caused by the incomplete removal from, and 
consequently a partial retention of the bile in, the 
blood, where it does not belong. When the liver 
removes this bile from the blood it stores it up in 
a small sac in that organ, from which it ultimately 
passes through a small duct or canal into the bowels, 
into which it empties at a short distance beyond 
the point where the narrowing of the bowel after 
its dilatation to form the stomach takes place. 



PLAINLY TREATED. 33 

The membrane which lines this duct is continuous 
and identical with that which lines the bowels. 
Now, can you not clearly understand how, when 
this undue retention of dead matter has caused an 
inflammation, an excess of blood in the lining of 
the bowels, this inflammation will extend up the 
bowels, through this duct or tube, and ultimately 
involve the liver itself? And let me tell you that 
neither the liver nor any other organ can properly 
do its duty if it is in a state of inflammation, if it 
has too much blood in it. This temporary en- 
gorgement, caused by a temporary constipation, if 
frequently repeated, will, by degrees, abnormally 
distend the vessels of the liver ; you will have a 
condition of chronic inflammation or engorge- 
ment, or too much blood produced, which, in 
turn, will cause degeneration and disease of the 
structure of the liver itself. So you have many 
cases of serious liver disease, induced by consti- 
pation. Of course, I need not tell you that the 
poisoned blood which I have said must result from 
constipation will carry some of this poison to all 



34 CONSTIPATION, 

the various parts of the body, and will produce 
injurious effects on them, thus interfering with the 
whole function of life. Let me close the list of 
ills produced by constipation, by telling you that 
death even may be caused by simple costiveness, 
when it has existed for a long time, and has be- 
come firmly established. To support this rather 
startling statement, let me quote the following 
remarkable case from Dr. Beale's work, already 
referred to. He says : " Constipation has caused 
death. I have myself seen such a case. I recol- 
lect an old lady who had been bed-ridden for 
years, and was, in fact, dying when she came 
under my observation, whose abdomen had in- 
creased to an enormous size. To my great aston- 
ishment, when I came to examine it, I found the 
swelling due to an enormous accumulation of hard 
fecal matter. There was no fluid, and very little 
gas ; but the whole abdomen (or belly) seemed 
occupied by a huge mass of hardened faeces, I 
should think, amounting in weight to thirty or 
forty pounds. Unfortunately, I only saw the 



PLAINLY TREATED. 35 

patient a few hours before death, when she was 
reduced to the last state of exhaustion, and when 
it was impossible to interfere. In this case, faeces 
had probably been gradually accumulating in the 
intestines without attracting notice. The patient 
being bed-ridden, the circumstance seems to have 
escaped observation. Probably if a medical prac- 
titioner had been allowed to interfere some six 
months before, the patient might have been saved. 
Injections might have been given, and the con- 
tents of the bowel thus removed, before any harm 
to it had resulted. 

I have now told you enough, I think, to make 
you fully realize the absolute necessity of free and 
daily evacuations from the bowels. You will now 
know, if you did not before, that the evil results of 
constipation are not confined to the bowels, but 
ramify throughout the whole organism. Indeed, 
they have no boundary. Their field of operation 
is only limited by the limits of the body itself. 

Let us now see how you can procure these much 
desired daily evacuations without the use of drugs. 



36 CONSTIPATION, 



PART THIRD. 



HOW TO PROCURE DAILY EVACUATIONS WITHOUT 
THE USE OF DRUGS. 

In the above title I emphasize the word Drugs, 
because I wish you to understand that the words 
drugs and medicines do not necessarily mean one 
and the same thing, though to the non-profes- 
sional mind these terms convey the same idea, and 
the ordinary individual regards both drugs and 
medicines as articles which must come from the 
druggist's shelf. All drugs are medicines, but all 
medicines are not necessarily drugs. To point 
this difference, let me quote from the standard 
and exhaustive work on "Therapeutics and Ma- 
teria Medica," by one of the greatest authorities 
now living, Professor Alfred Stille, of Philadel- 
phia. In the very first line of his introductory 
chapter, he says, "Medicines are substances used 
for the cure of diseases." Further on, he says, 
"In some sense, even, all food is medicinal, for it 



PLAINLY TREATED. 37 

counteracts hunger, the first symptom of a disease 
which tends directly to death." The word drug 
is less comprehensive in its meaning, and ought 
to be confined to those articles which the general 
public understand by the term medicine. Its use 
should be restricted to those articles whose sole 
use in the human system is to cure disease, while 
many articles comprised under the head of medi- 
cines (as Professor Stille has told us) may be used 
not only to cure disease, but also simply as food. 
To illustrate this, in what I am sorry to say will 
probably be the most familiar manner to the ma- 
jority of men, let me remind you that when you 
take a drink of brandy to relieve a stomach-ache, 
the brandy might here be considered a medicine, 
but you. would hardly be willing to call it a drug, 
though, indeed, I must confess, it takes rank 
among the poisons. Again, many a severe case 
of dyspepsia will be cured by strict adherence to 
a milk diet. Milk is here a medicine, but no one 
will venture to call it a drug. I draw this dis- 
tinction between medicines and drugs, because I 



38 CONSTIPATION, 

am now going to tell you that while much benefit 
will be derived by the person of costive habit 
from the use of certain medicines, about which I 
will inform you, nothing but injury and a further 
confirmation of the constipation can result from 
the indiscriminate use of drugs ; a habit which I 
exceedingly regret to say is so common among - 
our people, that the manufacturers of the various 
patent cure-all, anti-bilious and anti-costive pills 
have been enabled to build up enormous fortunes 
founded upon the gullibility (if I may be allowed 
the word) and ignorance of the laws of physiology 
of their victims. I use the word victims advis- 
edly. , I pity from the bottom of my heart the 
poor, well-meaning person, who, as a result of 
ignorance of the functions of his own body, will 
pay his money for and consume large quantities 
of these medicines, whose chief merits lie in the 
cunning minds of their manufacturers, and in the 
expensive and flaming advertisements of proper- 
ties which they do not possess, and by which 
means many intelligent persons are duped into 



PLAINLY TREATED. 39 

buying them, and do not discover their mistake 
until very serious and sometimes irreparable in- 
jury has been done. Many of these medicines 
will open the bowels, it is true ; I do not deny 
this ; but you must not be satisfied with this super- 
ficial action; look deeper, and see what they do. 
They open the bowels because they contain cer- 
tain drugs which possess the property of stimu- 
lating the muscular tissue in the bowels or rubber 
tube to increased action, and so they force the 
contents of this tube further and further along, 
until they finally reach the anus and are expelled. 
Stimulation is an artificial process. In order 
that our functions may be properly carried on, 
and that we may have healfhy life, there must 
be nothing artificial about us. All our actions, 
voluntary and involuntary, must conform to na- 
ture and be natural. You all know that stimula- 
tion is always followed by a corresponding de- 
pression. A certain quantity of alcohol taken 
into the system will stimulate every part of it \ all 
your organs will act more rapidly, you will live 



40 CONSTIPATION, 

faster, as it were. When this stimulating action 
has passed away you suffer from depression, evi- 
denced in numerous ways. 

You are morose, melancholy and low-spirited, 
evidencing mental depression. You experience 
chilly sensations, showing depression of the func- 
tion which generates heat. You have no appetite, 
showing depression of the general system. Your 
stomach cannot properly digest what you take into 
it, showing depression of the digestive function. 
And so on indefinitely, all your varied functions 
will clearly make known to you the inevitable de- 
pression that always follows stimulation. When 
the habitual drinker of alcohol has taken a glass or 
two too much at night, he knows full well the 
general depression which he experiences in the 
morning, and unfortunately he finds it necessary 
to consume more alcohol, in order to again stimu- 
late his varied functions, so as to once more bring 
them up to that standard which, in the ordinary 
healthy, temperate person would constitute only 
natural action. Ultimately his system becomes so 



PLAINLY TREATED. 41 

accustomed to this stimulating action of alcohol 
that his organs cannot act properly without.it, and 
so, in order to live with any degree of comfort, 
he is obliged to daily saturate his tissues with this 
poison ; or if he has sufficient manly resolution to 
discard this baneful habit, he must suffer terrible 
depression and many physical ills before his sys- 
tem can be brought to that healthy and natural 
condition by which it may be enabled to act 
simply as a result of the natural causes furnished 
to it by the Founder of Nature. So it is with this 
indiscriminate use of opening medicine. The 
bowels become ultimately so accustomed to the ar- 
tificial stimulating action of powerful drugs, that 
they absolutely refuse to move without their aid ; 
they are dependent on them for sufficient power to 
expel their contents \ and as with alcohol, so with 
these drugs, long continued use breeds such toler- 
ance of their effects that each successive dose 
must needs be larger than the preceding one, until, 
finally, enormous doses are required to procure a 
single evacuation from the bowels, which should 



42 CONSTIPATION, 

have occurred naturally and spontaneously if this 
pernicious habit had not been cultivated. I could 
tell you of one case where from twenty to thirty 
powerful pills are required to move the unnaturally 
torpid bowels. Do you not now think it wrong 
and very injurious to use these medicines, about 
which you know absolutely nothing, without first 
obtaining the advice of a competent physician, 
who has made the action of these medicines the 
study of his life ? If any lawyer reads this book, 
let me ask him if he would not consider a man 
very foolish, and very much to be criticised for 
want of good judgment, if, throwing aside the 
services of the legal profession, he were to under- 
take the management of his own law business, 
without having had any previous training in that 
line ? And so on, I might draw the comparison 
in every profession. But when we come to medi- 
cine, this question assumes much more import- 
ance; it then really becomes a vital question. 
When a man meets with financial misfortunes, his 
friends all say, to console him for his loss, "Oh, 



PLAINLY TREATED. 43 

well, you have good health." Those of a reli- 
gious turn of mind daily pray for a preservation t 
of health. Parents are anxiously solicitous about 
the health of their children. And yet, in spite 
of all this desire for health, these very persons will 
deliberately undertake to doctor themselves, and, 
as invariably happens when a man undertakes 
anything about which he knows nothing, they 
make many errors, and, instead of doing them- 
selves good, only make matters worse; and this 
in the face of the fact that their Creator has 
placed at their service the science of medicine 
and its practitioners, in order that all curable ills 
may be intelligently treated. This is not a plea 
for physicians ; far from it. Were I selfishly to 
consider the doctor, to the exclusion of the wel- 
fare of his patient, I would advise you all to freely 
use these proprietary medicines and wonderful 
specifics for everything \ because by so doing you 
would ultimately bring about such a state of ill 
health that you would of necessity fall into the 
hands of the physician, and then your system 



44 CONSTIPATION, 

would be so deranged that it would cost you much 
more time and many more dollars to secure a 
restoration to health than if you had sought intel- 
ligent counsel and advice in the beginning of 
your trouble. The venerable lawyer of our city, 
the Hon. Eli K. Price, tells me one of the most 
important secrets of his great age (nearly eighty- 
four years) and splendid health, when he says, 
" I am as watchful as to my food as is the smelter 
of iron that his furnace shall not chill and choke; 
and regulate my food to prevent constipation or 
laxity, rather than resort to medicine, which I avoid 
using until necessary ; and in illness, act in strict 
obedience to my chosen physician of regular gradu- 
ation." And he tells me that though he has 
been sick at times, from overwork, when he would* 
be compelled to pay attention to hygienic laws, 
that "my recuperations have been to a higher 
point of health, even to the present year, when 
eighty-three years old." Have I not, now, said 
enough to convince you that the unintelligent use 
of drugs can only be productive of ultimate harm? 



PLAINLY TREATED. 45 

It is like playing with fire \ if you trifle with it long 
enough, you will surely be burned. So let me 
beg you, if you desire good health — and show me 
the man or woman who really and sincerely does 
not, and I am prepared to attach my name to a 
certificate of insanity — never to take a single dose 
of opening medicine after you have read these 
pages, without the advice of your physician. 
Sometimes it is necessary to use them, but let 
your doctor be the judge. If the hygienic direc- 
tions I will give you, when fairly and patiently 
tried, do not suffice to establish a regular habit of 
evacuations, make up your mind that the consti- 
pation from which you are suffering is in reality a 
disease, as much so as pleurisy or pneumonia, 
and go to your doctor at once and follow his di- 
rections implicitly. 

I might here say that some persons seem to be 
so constituted that an evacuation only every sec- 
ond day constitutes in them the natural action of 
the bowels, and they do not seem to suffer the 
slightest inconvenience from it; and again, some 



46 CONSTIPATION, 

persons in good health will have two and may be 
three passages daily. In these cases such persons 
may rest easy and satisfied ; they need not endeav- 
or to procure daily evacuations. Still, however, 
these are only exceptional instances, every rule 
has exceptions ; and so I can, without fear, enun- 
ciate the fundamental principle, that " without a 
daily free evacuation from the bowels perfect health 
is impossible. 

Just here I will tell you of a remarkable case. 
The first edition of this little work brought me 
many letters, and among them the following 
remarkable one, detailing a case so unique that I 
feel sure it will be of interest to you. This case 
illustrates in a most marked way the fact that no 
universal panaceas exist for any trouble. What 
will do for one man will be utterly useless with 
another. It contains also some very instructive 
information. Some of my costive readers may 
try, as my correspondent did, all the means I 
will recommend, and yet may fail to procure 
regular evacuations, as he failed. Such persons 



PLAINLY TREATED. 47 

may try tlfe expedient to which he finally re- 
sorted, and succeed with it. Therefore, with his 
permission, I will give you his letter in full : 
" My dear Doctor, I thank you for the two 
books; the one on Constipation I have just 
finished reading, and having inherited costive- 
ness on the maternal side for over one hundred 
and fifty years, I can appreciate all your sensible 
suggestions on the subject; yet from personal 
experience, I know them all to be ineffectual to 
cure, at least in my case. After trying everything, 
as food, of a laxative nature, including fine, 
large wheat, ground in an ordinary coffee mill, 
and then boiled down to a jelly, and eaten with 
molasses or cream, I finally abandoned all and 
fell back on the daily use of a syringe. For over 
twelve years past I have never even attempted 
an evacuation without its use. If I go from home 
for a day or a month I take one with me. My 
case is doubtless a peculiar one, as everything gets 
through the hose (or bowel), without pain or 
even inconvenience, but when in the rectum 



48 CONSTIPATION, 

(lower bowel), a drying process commences, 
as fierce, hungry and quick, as if the faces had 
fallen into a kiln. A little water, say a pint, put 
into the rectum and held there a few minutes, 
will lubricate the dry, hard accumulations of a 
day, and, without straining, I am saved the 
horrors of prolapse, have a pleasant peristaltic 
movement, and go about my daily work, a cheer- 
ful and happy man. Friends whom I meet in the 
streets of Philadelphia often inquire what it is 
that gives such health and complexion at sixty- 
five. To the ladies we say, on our farm in 
Delaware County we have the spring that Ponce 
de Leon spent so much time in searching for, 
the rejuvenating water that gave renovated youth 
to all who drank or bathed in it. To my male 
friends I sing the wonders and blessings of the 
syringe." A few days after the receipt of this 
letter I met my correspondent, and he gave me 
more of the particulars of his interesting and 
remarkable case. All of his family, with but 
one single exception, are equally as costive as 



PLAINLY TREATED. 49 

he is, and all are prepared to glorify the syringe. 
For years he suffered tortures, really agony. 
Several days would elapse without an evacuation. 
He would be' miserable, low spirited, gloomy and 
despondent. Appetite and sleep would be im- 
paired. His food would not taste right. Finally, 
after several days, he would seek the closet and 
attempt to force an evacuation. The hard, dry, 
large and irritating masses of fecal matter would 
be slowly forced along the bowel, producing a 
stretching, a distending of this canal, and caus- 
ing such pain, such suffering, such agony, that I 
can readily believe the description given to me by 
many female patients, that the terrible suffering 
experienced from an evacuation of this nature is 
similar to, in kind, and only a little less severe 
than the tearing, distending and heart-rending 
pains of childbirth. When finally the fecal 
matter would leave the bowel, this terrible strain- 
ing would cause some of the bowel to protrude 
after it, and he would have prolapse. Then he 
tells me this suffering, this annoyance, this nervous 



50 CONSTIPATION, 

and uncomfortable condition, into which his 
terrible ordeal had thrown his whole system, 
would last nearly all day. In a few days this 
awful procedure would have to be repeated, and 
his life in the meantime be rendered miserable 
by unhappy anticipations of his inevitable suffer- 
ing. I will ask any of my female readers who 
may happen to be mothers, whether they would 
have any peace, happiness or quietude, if they 
felt sure that, regularly once a week, they would 
be compelled to undergo the sufferings of labor. 
My unfortunate correspondent was for many years 
compelled every few days to undergo a process 
very nearly as painful. His physique was wonder- 
ful, otherwise such strain and wear and tear 
would have killed him. He informed me that 
his mother, who was afflicted with this costive 
habit, died when about fifty years of age, and he 
added, "I firmly believe that had she been 
acquainted with the use of the syringe and its 
merits, she would, in the natural course of events, 
have lived to be eighty. ' ' My friend was treated 



PLAINLY TREATED. 51 

by nearly all the prominent physicians of Phila- 
delphia ; he tried every hygienic means to over- 
come his trouble, but derived only temporary 
benefit. His life was in reality a burden to him 
He could see pleasure in nothing. Finally he 
became acquainted with the syringe. A magical 
change came over him. With its use, daily, free, 
copious and painless evacuations became the rule. 
His sleep and appetite became good. His dis- 
position became joyous, he looked on the bright 
side of life. Should I point him out to you, and 
ask you to guess his age, I am sure you would say 
about fifty. He is sixty-five, and hale, hearty, 
vigorous, possessing an even and equable tem- 
perament, leading a regular and comfortable life ; 
he should, according to all natural laws, live for 
very many years. 

Let us begin where this costive habit usually 
commences, that is to say, in childhood. Most 
babies suffer from constipation. If your baby's 
bowels are not moved daily, I will tell you a sim- 
ple procedure which will generally secure a 



52 CONSTIPATION, 

passage. Take a piece of ordinary note paper, not 
too stiff, and roll it into an old-fashioned lamp 
lighter ; insert the sharp end carefully, gently and 
gradually into the bowels, for a distance of about 
two inches ;' let it remain for a few minutes. The 
presence of this paper will slightly irritate the 
bowels, not enough to do harm, but just enough to 
bring on sufficient action of their muscular coat to 
expel the contents. Smear the point with Castile 
soap before introducing, so that it may more easi- 
ly slip in. If this fails, procure a small, hard- 
rubber syringe, and daily inject into the bowel 
one or two syringefuls of warm (iiot hot) water ; 
this will aid the contraction of the bowel, and 
will, at the same time, soften and dilute its con- 
tents, so that they may the more easily be carried 
out. If this warm water fails, use a little Castile 
soap in the water. If the bowels still remain un- 
opened, substitute plain olive oil for the soap and 
water. If your baby is naturally costive, that is to 
say, if he does not have a regular daily evacuation, 
you should practice this injection daily, and I 



PLAINLY TREATED. 53 

would recommend bedtime, after baby is un- 
dressed and just before being put into bed, because 
a full and free evacuation from the bowels will 
insure to him a full night of sound and refreshing 
sleep. Attention to the bowels becomes of para- 
mount importance after baby has commenced to 
cut his teeth. All mothers know that when teething 
babies are particularly liable to convulsions. 
This is due to the fact that the teeth, in forcing 
their way through the gums, irritate and inflame 
them, and this irritation of the gums is conveyed, 
by the reflex action about which I have told you, 
to the brain, and irritating this delicate organ, 
will cause convulsions. Now, if, in addition to 
the irritation from teething, baby's bowels are 
also irritated by the retention in them of a foul 
mass of decayed matter, the liability to convul- 
sions is doubled. This irritation of the gums will 
produce a feverish state of the blood \ now, if the 
bowels are costive, this feverishness will be in- 
creased. If you are nursing your baby, it will be 
well for you to eat freely of such food as I shall 



54 CONSTIPATION, 

tell you, further on, has a tendency to open the 
bowels ; baby receiving this through the medium 
of your milk, will be made regular. Be careful, 
however, to avoid such articles as experience 
tells you will give baby colic. If these simple 
means fail, do not resort to castor oil or any other 
drug, but ask your doctor what to do. 

In this connection a word for what are gener- 
ally termed " cross children" It is not natural 
for a child who is well to be cross. Of course, 
there are exceptions to this, as to every rule. 
But in the majority of cases, a child whose organs 
are all working properly, who has plenty to eat, 
and who is not in any way irritated, will be good ; 
it will not cry and worry. Therefore, if your 
child is fretful and peevish, and at the same time 
is in good health, examine as to whether the 
clothing is irritating or fits badly, or whether a 
pin may be sticking him. If you can find no 
cause, then you may suspect worms. The pres- 
ence of these parasites in the bowels, I doubt not, 
has earned for many a little girl or boy the unjust 



PLAINLY TREATED. 55 

soubriquet of " cross." When you suspect these 
worms to be present, having excluded all other 
causes for the crossness, you may purchase some good 
worm syrup from a reliable druggist, and use it. 
lam not an advocate of " home doctoring ;" I 
heartily condemn the practice ; my books are not 
meant to supplant, but merely to aid the advice 
of the doctor ; still, in this trifling and excessively 
common trouble of worms, I do not think you 
will do your child any harm by using some simple 
worm syrup, according to the printed directions 
of some reliable, mind you, I say reliable, apothe- 
cary. 

When your baby becomes a little girl or boy, 
and is able to toddle about and eat table food, 
you can, in addition to the means I have already 
indicated, use certain articles of food. A very 
good practice is to give your children oatmeal 
mush for breakfast. This oatmeal, after all the 
nourishment is removed from it by digestion in 
the stomach and bowels, still leaves a large indi- 
gestible residue, which is somewhat irritating to 



56 CONSTIPATION, 

the lining membrane of the bowels ; not enough 
here, again, to do harm, but just enough to remove 
the torpidity which may exist and excite the tube 
to healthy action. Bran bread, unbolted flour, 
grits, cracked wheat, and the like, may also be 
used at breakfast for the same purpose. One of 
the most important elements in establishing and 
maintaining a habit of daily evacuations is 
regularity. When I am requested to prescribe for 
a case of constipation, my first instruction to the 
patient is to determine what time of the day is 
the most convenient for them to devote to this 
important function, and when they have settled 
on this hour, I insist upon their seeking the water 
closet precisely at the same hour each day. I tell 
them to remain there for a few minutes, and to 
strain gently ; if they strain very much they will 
be liable to do themselves a great deal of harm. 
If they fail at first, I tell them to go the next day 
at the same time, and so on, day after day, until, 
ultimately, this process of coaxing will have the 
desired effect on the lazy and torpid bowels, and 



PLAINLY TREATED. 57 

a regular daily habit will be established, and the 
desire will manifest itself each day at precisely the 
same hour. Then I caution them that, having 
once established, they must never neglect this de-' 
sire. Every one has experienced the fact that if 
you resist a desire to have the bowels moved, after 
a little while this desire will disappear, and no 
effort of the will can bring it back ; well, one 
day's neglect of this desire, in a person who has 
been for some time constipated, will, in many 
cases, derange the bowels for several days. So, 
as soon as your baby is large enough, put him 
regularly every day, at the same hour, on his 
chair, and giving him toys to amuse himself, let 
him remain there until his bowels have been 
moved. Do not fret and worry if your baby is 
costive ;» nearly all babies and young children are 
so. I once heard a prominent physician, the 
father of a large family, say that his different 
children came to him daily for an injection, with 
as much regularity as they would eat their 
dinners. He would give them the injection, 



58 CONSTIPATION, 

but at the same time would use the means I 
have given you to produce a regular habit, and 
ultimately, as his children grew older, the injec- 
tions became unnecessary. Keep up this super- 
vision until your children have grown to be young 
men and women, and they will not forget the 
training they have had, but will continue through 
life to understand and appreciate the necessity of 
regularity in this respect, and will, in turn, im- 
press it upon their children, and so I warrant you 
not a small share of disease and bad health will 
be averted. You know how necessary it some- 
times is to coax an obstinate child to do as you 
may desire, and every one is familiar with the 
coaxing requisite to move a balky horse. Well, 
this process which I have just described to you is 
one of coaxing : by offering the opportunity at 
regular and stated intervals, you coax, you beg, a,s 
it were, the obstinate and lazy bowels to healthy 
action, to do as you desire, and as in the cases of 
the obstinate child and the balky horse, your 
efforts will ultimately be crowned with success, 



PLAINLY TREATED. 59 

and the bowels, like the child and the horse, will 
eventually yield to your repeated pleadings, and 
a regular habit will be established. If you do not 
at first succeed in establishing this habit of regu- 
larity, do not fret and worry ; if you do, you will 
make yourself feverish, fretful and irritable, prob- 
ably cause a headache and make matters worse. 
Take the refusal of your bowels to act coolly and 
philosophically ; wait until the next day and try 
again. I need hardly tell you that should the de- 
sire to evacuate arise before the next day comes, 
do not refuse obedience to its commands. 

I have known many obstinate cases of constipa- 
tion to be ultimately overcome by the following 
simple method ; Pare an apple and eat it before 
breakfast, chewing it thoroughly, until it becomes 
pulpy, before swallowing; on top of this drink a 
glass of cold water, then eat your breakfast. In 
many cases a desire to have the bowels moved 
will be experienced immediately after breakfast, 
when this habit is persevered in. I have known 
some persons who never experienced the desire 



60 CONSTIPATION, 

immediately after breakfast, but who, after a short 
walk, would have a copious movement. These 
persons would always walk to their place of busi- 
ness and seek the water-closet immediately after 
reaching there. Muscular exercise is a most pow- 
erful agent in promoting regularity of bowel ac- 
tion. I have known persons who were subject to 
attacks of constipation and biliousness, foul mouth 
and disordered stomach, who would take a brisk 
five-mile walk in the pure, bracing and invigora- 
ting air, and upon returning home would have a 
copious discharge from the bowels, followed by 
immediate relief from all their distressing symp- 
toms. You all know that a brisk walk in the 
country, where the air is pure anduncontaminated, 
has a tendency to quicken the circulation and to 
elevate the spirits and remove the general depres- 
sion, physical and mental, to which the residents 
of our large and crowded cities are so liable; 
well, in this general elevation or natural stimulation 
of all our muscles and organs, the muscular coat of 
the bowels comes in for its share, and, stimulated 



PLAINLY TREATED. Gl 

to a certain extent, its unnatural torpidity is 
removed, and it obtains sufficient strength and 
vigor to expel its contents. Also, this muscular 
exercise causes a change, a transformation of the 
muscular elements concerned in its performance 
into so much dead and decayed matter, seeking 
removal from the body, wherein it has performed 
its duty, and is no longer of any use ; so that this 
additional bulk of matter, being superadded to 
that already stored up in the bowels, makes a 
stronger impression on them, the demand for 
removal becomes greater, and hence the torpid 
bowels are finally compelled, in spite of their 
laziness, to act. So I would recommend to the 
costive man a brisk, daily walk of five miles in the 
country, and to the woman half that distance. If 
you can secure pleasant and cheerful company in 
this walk, so much the better; if you cannot, em- 
ploy your mind with pleasant thoughts, to the 
exclusion of business. Select a beautiful country, 
in which the aspect of nature is varied, so that the 
eye may not become tired and the mind exhausted 



62 CONSTIPATION, 

by monotony. Make this walk a pleasure, and 
not a duty. Do not tell me that you cannot find 
time for this daily walk ; that you are too busy, 
and so on. Charles Dickens, who probably per- 
formed as much and as satisfactory work in his 
lifetime as any man who ever lived, was able to 
make time for an almost daily /<?/z-mile walk, to 
which he invariably resorted when he felt out of 
sorts and in poor spirits. When oppressed, from 
too much work, and I dare say, sometimes from 
costiveness, he would write, in his off-hand way, 
to his intimate friend, "Come for a stroll in the 
country and a chop. ' ' Off they would start, and 
after a brisk five-mile walk in the country sur- 
. rounding London, would indulge in a chop and 
a mug of ale or beer, and, after a short rest, back 
they would speed to town. These walks, enliv- 
ened and made pleasant by the companionship 
and conversation of his most intimate friend, 
during which, no doubt, they would exchange 
ideas upon and discuss the various themes sug- 
gested to them by the surrounding nature, would 



PLAINLY TREATED. 63 

always bring the great novelist back to the city 
full of health and . good spirits, and amply pre- 
pared to make up by increased power of applica- 
tion (for the time consumed in recreation) to his 
iavorite literary work, which has made his name 
famous for all time in every portion of the globe 
in which the English language is or may be 
spoken. Do not neglect this all important matter 
of exercise. I know you are prepared to doubt 
the influence of exercise of your legs in causing 
extra activity of your bowels, but nevertheless, in 
spite of your skepticism, this relation does exist ; 
and if you do not believe me, ask some doctor in 
whose opinion you have confidence. Some judg- 
ment must, however, be used in this matter of 
exercise, or you may do more harm than good. 
"One man's meat is another man's poison," you 
know. You must ever bear in mind that there 
does not exist such a thing as a u universal pana- 
cea." This very five-mile walk may cure consti- 
pation in one person and only serve to confirm 
the habit in another. Try it, however, and let 



64 CONSTIPATION, 

your own experience be your guide. As a rule, a 
person whose occupation is of a sedentary nature 
will be more benefited by a short walk, say of two 
or three miles, than he will by one of five. Why? 
Because evenness of life is most conducive to 
health. If a person be accustomed to a quiet, 
sedentary life, and suddenly breaks away from 
his work to indulge in a brisk five-mile walk, the 
change from his usual mode of life is too sudden 
and severe, and his system receives an unpleasant 
shock, which it will probably resent. While, on 
the other hand, one whose occupation is of an 
active character will receive, not a shock, but a 
gentle and pleasant stimulus from this same walk. 
Exercise, and especially that form of exercise de- 
rived from walking, will be particularly valuable 
to judges and lawyers. Their lives, from the na- 
ture of their occupations, must be sedentary, and 
worse than sedentary. Much as I respect an up- 
right and honest judge, believing, as I do, that 
his profession is one of the very highest known 
to man, his responsibilities and his power for 



PLAINLY TREATED. 65 

doing good, if this power be properly and intelli- 
gently and faithfully made use of, enormous, yet 
I thoroughly and sincerely pity him. He is, 
in reality, himself a sacrifice to human justice, 
as much so as the criminal in the dock before 
him, upon whom he passes sentence of capital 
punishment. His sacrifice is a slow and pro- 
longed one; hence it is not appreciated as it 
should be. The book-keeper and the clerk receive 
the pity and commiseration of sanitarians, because 
their work is so confining. How much more the 
poor judges are deserving of this pity I shall en- 
deavor to show you. A book-keeper or a clerk 
is confined, it is true, nearly all day in his office, 
and does not find time for muscular exercise ; but, 
as a rule, the number of people who inhabit this 
same office, in proportion to the space for air, is 
so small that he is assured a sufficiency of pure, 
wholesome atmospheric air, which supplies him 
with an abundance of the health and life-giving 
oxygen. Again, the business offices of mercantile 
men (in Philadelphia, at least, and I imagine in 



66 CONSTIPATION, 

most large cities) are, as a rule, at some distance 
from their homes, so that by walking to and from 
their offices they secure a considerable amount of 
exercise. Literary men lead very sedentary lives, 
but this is their own fault and not their misfor- 
tune. They can arrange their hours and places 
of work to suit themselves. They can, if they so 
desire, have plenty of exercise. They can live in 
the country, and in fair weather do their work 
out of doors, under the shelter of a tent, thus re- 
ceiving plenty of air, and can intermit their work 
every now and then for a few minutes' muscular 
exercise. The large, successful, and wealthy 
merchant can arrange, if he so pleases, his hours 
of business so as to allow him plenty of time for 
exercise ; he can have plenty of air in his office, 
and can every now and then refresh himself with 
a short trip. The physician, busy and hard 
worked though he may be, exposed constantly to 
contagion, yet, from the very nature of his occu- 
pation, he receives a sufficiency of exercise. If 
not very successful, he makes his professional 



PLAINLY TREATED. 67 

visits on foot, and thus gets exercise. If very 
busy, he is continually alighting from and getting 
into his carriage, ascending and descending stairs, 
all of which is exercise for his muscles. The me- 
chanic and laboring man all exercise their mus- 
cles. But the poor judge ; let us follow him. 
From ten in the morning until three in the after- 
noon, for ten, and in some cases, for twelve 
months in the year, he is compelled to sit quietly 
in a crowded court room. The room not only 
contains 'more persons, by a large majority, than 
even the most improved method of ventilation 
could furnish a sufficiency of oxygen to, were they 
pure and immaculate as angels, but in addition to 
this overcrowding, which would in itself alone 
poison the atmosphere, the majority of the occu- 
pants are from the very lowest and dirtiest classes 
of society. Their lungs and their bodies are con- 
stantly giving out foul odors of rotten tobacco 
and worse whisky, decayed tissue and filth of all 
kinds, to still further poison and deteriorate the 
air of this overcrowded room. And in this at- 



68 CONSTIPATION, 

mosphere of filth and poison the poor judge is 
obliged to quietly and passively sit, hour after 
hour, and day after day, no exercise for his mus- 
cles, all brain work. Is he not a sacrifice? Is 
he not to be pitied? Is it any wonder that his 
bowels become torpid and lazy, and he is costive ? 
I will advise all judges who desire to have health, 
long life, and regular daily evacuations from the 
bowels, to make their residence in the pure and 
uncontaminated country, three or four miles out. 
When court adjourns they should hurry to their 
homes; riding or driving out will afford them 
good exercise. Let them fly, at the very earliest 
moment, from the pest house they have been in- 
habiting all day to the pure country, and rid their 
lungs and body of the accumulated filth. If they 
will not do this, let them make a daily practice 
of taking a good long walk in the suburbs of their 
city, where the air will be less contaminated than 
in the heart of the city. If you follow my advice 
you will have regular daily evacuations, and all 
the subsequent health, pleasure and comfort de- 



PLAINLY TREATED. 69 

pendent upon them. If you do not you will be 
costive, and you know now what that means. In 
connection with this recommendation of walking, 
let me urge upon you the free use of all kinds of 
muscular exercise, such as riding, driving, swim- 
ming, skating, and the like, using the same judg- 
ment in their employment as I have indicated in 
my remarks on walking. They will not only serve 
to improve your general health, but will exert a 
specific influence in aiding the torpid bowels. 

I must here condemn one of the most usual 
forms of exercise indulged in by young men, but 
will make a qualified condemnation. If you will 
get into a boat and paddle leisurely two or three 
miles, resting every few minutes for a few seconds, 
you will derive positive benefit from this form of 
exercise. But how few young men row after this 
fashion. They join a club, and from the start 
their ambition is to form one of the racing crew ; 
consequently, they practice, hour after hour and 
day after day, rowing violently, for many miles, 
and imagine they are developing their strength. 



70 CONSTIPATION, 

They do develop their voluntary muscles, that is, 
those under the control of their will, but this they 
do in many cases at the expense of their vital 
organs. This violent strain which they put on 
their hearts will, in many cases, so injure this 
important organ that serious disease will ensue, 
and though they may become magnificent speci- 
mens of physical development, they break down 
prematurely, and become old men in middle 
life, invalids while still young, with a diseased 
heart. This fact is familiarly illustrated in 
Wilkie Collins' novel, " Man and Wife" (I 
think it is), in the person of Geoffry Hamlyn, 
who is one of the typical English amateur 
athletes of the present day. His sole aim in life 
seems to be to develop his muscles. He succeeds 
admirably, and is a marvel of brute strength. He^ 
undertakes to engage in a running match, though 
warned by physicians that he may ruin himself by 
so doing. He enters the race and out-distances 
all competitors ; when nearing the end he sud- 
denly totters and falls unconscious on the track ; 



PLAINLY TREATED. 71 

he is picked up a confirmed invalid, a broken- 
down man, with heart disease, and this once mag- 
nificent specimen of manhood, though still young 
and apparently robust, seems like an old man, and 
drags out a miserable existence of suffering, ulti- 
mately dying many years sooner than was neces- 
sary. He had overstrained his heart and it had 
succumbed. Again, even though you may not 
desire to train for a race, you will generally form 
one of a crew of four or six, who start out to row 
a given distance. Under the command of a cox- 
swain you all pull together, and are anxious to 
make your boat speed through the water. Should 
you become exhausted, your pride urges you to 
keep up with your companions, and so neglect- 
ing the warning you receive, you continue to 
overstrain your heart, and, ultimately, disease 
will ensue. 

I would decry running as an exercise; this 
form of exercise is no better than walking, 
and is far more dangerous. In a word, all 
violent exercise is injurious, and none should be 



72 CONSTIPATION, 

indulged in that will cause the heart to beat vio- 
lently and very rapidly. Exercise should never 
be carried to a point of actual fatigue ; stop a 
little short of this and you will benefit yourself; 
go beyond it and you do yourself an injury. 

Before leaving this question of exercise, I will 
refer to a paper read at a recent meeting of the 
Philadelphia County Medical Society, by Dr. 
Benjamin Lee, on the "Treatment of Constipa- 
tion by the Swedish Movement Cure. ' ' As all the 
motions in it described really mean muscular 
exercise, active or passive, I will transcribe it as 
I find it reported in the Medical and Surgical 
Reporter-. "In order the more readily to convey 
a definite idea of the principles on which the 
Swedish movement cure is based, and the mode in 
which these principles are carried into practical 
execution, I have written upon the blackboard 
a prescription for that bete noire of the profession, 
constipation. I recommend this mode of pre- 
scribing, as the sword which, so far at least as a 
large amount of chronic disease is concerned, 



PLAINLY TREATED. 73 

will cut the Gordian knot of the problem with 
which we have been wrestling this evening, 
namely, the relations of the druggist to the 
physician ; for I venture to say that no apothecary 
can be found who will undertake to compound a 
prescription like this. You will observe that each 
clause of the prescription contains two parts ; 
the first is the attitude or position to be assumed 
by the patient in taking the movement; the 
second is the movement itself. I have distin- 
guished them by drawing a line down the middle 
of the prescription. 

PRESCRIPTION OF MOVEMENTS FOR A CASE OF OB- 
STINATE CONSTIPATION. 



i. Heave standing. 

2. Half lying. 

3. High ride fall sitting. 

4. Toward standing. 

5. High ride turn sitting. 



Chest expansion, deep inspiration. 

Leg flexion and extension (p. r). 

Trunk twisting (p. r). 

Thigh extension, forced (p. r). 

Circular twisting with pressure 
upon stomach and in the lum- 
bar region. 

Colon stroking. 

Spine extension, forced (p. r.) 

Liver vibration. 

Abdomen kneading, pressure with 
vibration over solar plexus. 

"The attitudes being very various, their no- 
menclature is necessarily somewhat cumbersome, 
while its foreign parentage makes it awkward to 

F 



6. Extension standing. 

7. Forehead fix, high knee astride 

standing. 

8. Side stretch standing. 

9. Lying. 



74 CONSTIPATION, 

our ears. Suffice it to say, that each variation 
has reference to special groups of muscles, or cer- 
tain organs. 

" The first movement in this prescription is a 
respiratory one, taken in the erect position, with 
the chest thrown out, and accompanied by deep 
inspirations; its object being to invigorate the 
entire system by introducing a large amount of 
oxygen into the blood, and by means of this pure 
blood supply to bring both muscles and nerves 
into a highly vitalized state, in which they will 
respond most readily to the stimulus of the sub- 
sequent movements. 

" The second is derivative, designed to relieve 
congestion of the abdominal organs, by drawing 
down the blood into the lower extremities. In 
this, the trunk is placed at rest in a semi-recum- 
bent posture. The letters (p. r.) will be noticed 
immediately after this movement. They signify 
that patient resists, the movement being made by 
the operator. This is, therefore, a duplicated 
movement, and the entire will of the patient 



PLAINLY TREATED. 75 

being concentrated upon this effort, it is power- 
fully revulsive. 

" The third movement has two principal ends : 
the first, pressure upon the entire abdominal con- 
tents by the abdominal parietes (or walls of the 
belly), thus relieving congestion by forcing the 
blood out of the larger vessels ; and secondly, in- 
vigorating and developing the transverse and ob- 
lique abdominal muscles, which are rarely brought 
into play in ordinary exertions. The attitude is 
such as to fix the pelvis. The arms are then 
crossed over the top of the head, and the extended 
elbows are made use of as a lever, by means of 
which the trunk is twisted or rotated upon its axis, 
the patient resisting the operator's effort. 

"The fourth places the abdominal muscles, espe- 
cially the recti, 'strongly upon the stretch, thus 
inviting a copious flow of blood into their capilla- 
ries, while at the same time, by irritating the 
muscles about the hip and perineum, and the 
psoas and iliacus, it stimulates the nerves of the 
lumbar and pelvic plexuses. 



76 CONSTIPATION, 

" The next consists in a rapid rotation of the en- 
tire trunk upon the pelvis, bringing all the mus- 
cles of the lower part of the trunk into play, and 
subjecting the pelvic viscera (or organs) to al- 
ternate pressure and relief from pressure. It pro- 
motes activity in the portal circulation (the 
liver), and stimulates peristaltic action. It is 
accompanied with firm pressure upon the stomach 
and in the lumbar region, the former with a view 
of stimulating the solar plexus, and the latter the 
lumbar nerves. 

" The next movement is entirely passive, the pa- 
tient standing, while the operator slowly and 
firmly strokes the colon in the direction of its ver- 
micular wave ; (the process of pressure or knead- 
ing, described on the next page) its primary 
object being to accelerate the 'passage of fecal 
masses and flatus (gases) through that portion 
of the canal, and its secondary object to stimulate 
its rhythmic contractions. 

" The seventh produces extreme erection of the 
spine, thus affording increased space for the ab- 



PLAINLY TREATED. 77 

dominal organs, usually compressed by improper 
attitudes. 

" The eighth movement is the movement-cure 
blue pill. The patient takes such an attitude as 
shall place the muscles of the right side strongly 
on the stretch (bending the body to the left), 
and the operator then produces a rapid vibration 
of the parietes (or walls) of the chest and ab- 
domen immediately over the liver. The effect is 
to relieve congestion of that organ and' excite a 
healthy flow of bile. 

"Finally, the patient lies upon the back, and a 
thorough kneading of the abdomen is given, fol- 
lowed by pressure and vibration (or slapping) 
over the solar plexus (in the vicinity of the 
stomach). The circulation of all the abdomi- 
nal viscera is thus stimulated, the passage of both 
chyle and faeces through the alimentary canal is 
aided, healthy secretion is promoted, undue ac- 
cumulations of mucus are dislodged, and the great 
nervous centre of the organic system is roused 
into the highest state of activity. There are very 



78 CONSTIPATION. 

few cases of constipation, however obstinate, which 
will resist a fortnight of this treatment daily, and 
many cases will yield in a week. The time occu- 
pied in carrying out this prescription is about an 
• hour." The last sentence of this article, which 
I give in italics, will explain my reason for giving 
you the paper in full. This prescription can be 
more easily carried out than you imagine. Do 
not read the directions cursorily or hastily, lest 
you may forget them ; read them carefully and 
commit the different movements to memory; the 
wife can then assist the husband, the husband the 
wife, the mother the daughter, the father the son, 
and so, by a course of mutual aid, this scourge of 
constipation may be removed from a whole family. 

I have said what I have about exercise because 
what I tell you is not only pertinent to your 
general health, but it will also have an influence 
on your bowels. 

Friction with a coarse towel over the abdomen 
will have a tendency to stimulate the bowels to 
action, and should always be practiced. Dr. 



PLAINLY TREATED. 79 

Birch, in his work on "Constipation," recom- 
mends pressure or kneading over the abdomen, 
to be made as follows : Commence low down on 
the right side, and .press gently, but firmly, with 
your hand, and draw it upward until you reach 
the lower border of the ribs, then cross the abdo- 
men to the left side and descend to the lowest 
possible point. This is the course taken by that 
portion of the bowels which I have described to 
you as the large intestine, and, by this pressure, 
you gently stimulate this part of the rubber tube 
to increased action, and so enable it to move 
along and finally expel its contents. This pres- 
sure should be practiced twenty or thirty times, 
morning and evening, and in connection with 
the other measures I have or will indicate. 

A cold bath in the morning will be beneficial 
to some people, and many claim for it a high 
rank among practices calculated to stimulate the 
bowels to action. Try it, and if it agrees with 
you, persevere in it. If, however, you feel badly 
after its use ; if the surface of your body feels 



80 CONSTIPATION, 

chilly and looks blue, make up your mind that a 
cold bath is injurious to you, and abandon it. 
You may then substitute for it the following pro- 
cedure: Wring a towel out in cold water and 
•lay it over the surface of your abdomen for a few 
minutes; in other words, take a cold abdominal 
bath ; in many cases this will sufficiently stimulate 
the bowels to cause them to act, while you will 
escape the bad results to your system at large 
which the///// cold bath might produce. In other 
cases the same procedure, substituting warm for 
cold water, will prove efficacious. 

We now come to a very important factor in 
the promotion of regularity of evacuations from 
the bowels. Diet or Food. Some articles of food, 
as you no doubt are already aware, will have a 
tendency to produce costiveness, while other ar- 
ticles will promote regularity of action. I have 
already advocated the use of oatmeal, and bran 
bread, and the like, and told you how they act. 
Let us now examine this very important matter 
of diet more fully, and see of how much benefit 



PLAINLY TREATED. 81 

a correct knowledge on this subject may be to 
you. Fruit is an exceedingly potent agent in 
this connection. It contains nature's purgative. 
But here, again, we must use judgment. You all 
know the saying about fruit : " In the morning it 
is as gold ; silver at noon, and lead alright." I 
have in my mind, while writing, a case in -which 
this saying is almost literally true. In this case, 
an apple or any kind of fruit eaten before break- 
fast, and followed by the glass of water already 
recommended, invariably produces a full and 
copious passage immediately after breakfast ; but 
if this same person should eat an apple just before 
going to bed, it will lie on his stomach like lead, 
and ten chances to one he will lie awake half the 
night, tortured with dyspepsia. So, my costive 
friends, cultivate a habit of eating fruit of some 
kind before breakfast ; let it always be placed on 
the table, and let it constitute the prologue to 
the meal proper ; but avoid it at night. To those 
who can make a choice I would recommend an 
apple or an orange ; if you cannot choose, use 



82 CONSTIPATION, 

any fruit you can procure. Stewed prunes, apple 
sauce, stewed rhubarb, rhubarb pie, grapes, 
bananas, peaches, figs, dried apples, evaporated 
peaches, sliced peaches with cream and sugar, 
.strawberries, raspberries, blackberries. Take 
your choice. If you do not like one, try another. 
Remember one thing, no matter what you try. 
Do not eat fruit for one day, and then, because 
your bowels are not moved, get disgusted, say 
there is no merit in its use, and give it up. Per- 
severe ; you know that in everything success is the 
reward of perseverance, and here this rule holds 
good, as much so as in anything else. Cultivate 
the habit, persevere in its use throughout your 
life, remember the coaxing and the necessity for 
regularity about which I have told you, and, ulti- 
mately, success will be yours ; your bowels will be 
regular, and your health much improved. 

We are very funny people in this world ] what 
great exertions we will undergo \ what laborious 
hardships persons will sometimes undertake of 
their own free will; and yet if you were to en- 



PLAINLY TREATED. 83 

deavor to force these same people to do these 
same things, they would rebel, and it would be 
impossible to get them to do as you would de- 
sire. And all through the perverseness of human 
nature. What we desire to do is easily and 
pleasantly done, while if some one else compels 
us to do the same thing against our inclinations 
it becomes irksome, and assuming the shape of 
something we do not want to do, it becomes 
hard labor. So with this very matter of eating 
fruit. Nearly every one considers fruit as a 
luxury, an article to be sought after ; but when 
they come to look on it as something suggested to 
them by another, as a medicine, I doubt not that 
many of my readers will turn from its use with 
distaste and cast it aside. Let me beg such 
people to be more philosophical; let me ask them 
not to let my recommendation of its use alter the 
flavor of the fruit for them. It will do them 
much good, and let me urge them to use it. A 
sufficient amount of water taken into the body is 
a requisite of regular evacuations. Because, if 



84 CONSTIPATION, 

you do not have enough water to properly soften 
and dilute the contents of your bowels, the mass 
therein contained will be so hard and dry that 
your bowels will find it hard work to move it 
along, and when it is finally expelled it will cause 
you much pain ; because, not being properly di- 
luted, the dead tissue has accumulated in a large, 
dry, and hard mass, which so distends the end of 
your bowel in passing from it as to cause much 
pain, sometimes amounting to positive agony. 
You all know that if you attempt to swallow a 
mouthful of food, without first allowing it to be 
thoroughly mixed with the saliva in your mouth, 
how it will stick in the throat, and how difficult 
it will be to swallow it, and how much pain this 
act will cause you. Well, I have already told 
you that the bowels are but a prolongation, a 
continuation of the throat, and if the matter in 
the bowels be hard and dry, this same trouble and 
pain in its movement along this tube will be ex- 
perienced, only it will be increased, insomuch as 
while the throat is only about a foot and a half 



PLAINLY TREATED. 85 

long, the bowel is about twenty-five feet. So if 
your passages are large, hard, and dry, and cause 
you much pain, and if you partake sparingly of 
water, use it more freely. But be sure that in 
relieving your constipation you do not produce 
still greater ills ; in other words, be sure that the 
water you use is pure and clean. If you have the 
slightest reason to suspect its perfect purity, boil 
and filter it before using. Some persons, and 
particularly women, have a bad habit of drinking 
tea, and these women will say that in this tea they 
take water into their bodies ; so they do ; but in 
the large majority of cases this tea will cause indi- 
gestion, and, therefore, I cannot recommend its 
use. 

Some forms of alcoholic liquors will have a 
tendency to move the bowels, such as beer, hock, 
cider, perry, and so on, but their use will ulti- 
mately make matters worse, because, by deranging 
the liver and stomach, as they sooner or later 
will, they will only serve finally to confirm the 
costive habit. 



86 CONSTIPATION, 

With some people milk is very constipating. 
If it has this effect on you, and if it agrees with 
you in other respects, try whether you cannot use 
it and obviate the constipating effects by the 
means I have indicated. If in spite of these 
agents the milk continues to keep you costive, 
you had better place it on the proscribed list. 
All fresh and green vegetables should be freely 
used by costive persons. The Almighty furnishes 
to us, in them, nature's purgative, and their use 
cannot be too highly commended. For many 
hundred years the world prospered on their use, 
and was surely not the loser, and most probably 
the gainer. The cupidity and invention of man 
has at last furnished to us the various canned 
vegetables now offered for sale. They gratify the 
palate in winter, when snow covers the ground 
and fresh vegetables are a thing of the past, but I 
am quite sure that at the same time they give rise 
to and maintain many cases of constipation. 

Dr. Beale recommends, as very efficient in 
many cases, a small cup of sweetened black coffee, 



PLAINLY TREATED. 87 

before rising. Try it. Let me sum up by quot- 
ing from Dr. Beale's work. He says: "A 
liberal allowance of meat and a too highly nutri- 
tious diet favor constipation ; on the other hand, 
various kinds of fruit and many soft vegetables 
tend to prevent and relieve constipation." In 
conclusion, let me tell you that if you are consti- 
pated, and have been so for years, and if, after 
reading this little book, you come to realize and 
appreciate the necessity of regular evacuations, 
anS make up your mind to use the means I have 
indicated to procure them, if at first you fail, 
try, and try, and try again ; but if you do not at 
first succeed, do not get nervous and fidgety ; you 
will make matters worse. If you have been cos- 
tive for years, a few additional days of this habit 
will not work you very much additional injury, 
while serenity and evenness of mind will do much 
to overcome it. To use my favorite simile : if 
your stove becomes choked with ashes, it will do 
you no good to fret and fume about it ; but if you 
quietly and calmly set to work and remove the 



88 CONSTIPATION. 

ashes, put in fresh coal, and apply the vital spark 
or match, your fire will soon be as good as ever. 
So quietly and philosophically use the proper 
means to remove your human ashes, and to se- 
cure their daily and regular discharge, and your 
vital fire will ultimately burn as bright as ever, 
even though the flame may for years have been 
smothered beneath a foul mass of rotten debris. 
Hoping I may have made clear, even to the least 
intelligent mind, the means by which they may 
assure this daily regular and complete purifica- 
tion, I give you this little book for what it is 
worth. 



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CONDENSATION OP CONTENTS. 

The Tongue in Health and Slight Ailments, Appetite, Nausea, Thirst, 
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zette. 

"The advice given as to treatment is so excellent, that no student or 
young practitioner should neglect to read it." — Med. and Surgical Reporter. 

" In a very important sense, a popular book." — Chicago Advance. 

" An admirable treatise upon the minor ills /which flesh is heir to."— 
Springfield Republican. 

G 1 



Presley Blakiston's 



BRIGHT'S DISEASE. How Persons Threatened or Afflicted 
•with this Disease Ought to Live. By J. F. Edwards, m.d. 16mo, 98 
pages. Cloth. Price 75 cents. 
The author Rives, in a readable manner, those instructions in relation 

to Hygiene, Clothing, Eating, Bathing, etc., etc., which, when carried out, 

will prolong the life of those suffering from this disease, and a neglect of 

which costs annually many litres. 

WHAT IS SAID OP IT. 

*• Every one should read this excellent little volume, in which Dr. Ed- 
wards describes and defines the disease."— Providence Journal. 

"This little book is prepared, not in the interest of the doctor, but of the 
sufferer." — Louisville Christian Observer. 

" A very valuable work." — New York Commercial Advertiser. 

"Plainly written, and ought to be of great use." — Philadelphia Ledger. 

"What should be done and avoided are clearly shown, and the informa- 
tion communicated is of general interest." — Albany Journal. 

" Plain and straightforward."— Baltimore Sun. 

"An admirable and much needed book."— Catholic Mirror, Baltimore. 

" A remarkably' aMe and useful treatise upon an obscure and vital sub- 
ject." — North American. 

"Should be read carefully by every one."— The Voice, Albany, N. Y. 

"It encourages the sufferer as well as instructs him."— Congregationalist. 

" An intelligent work."— Toledo Blade. 

"A clear statement of some of the rules of life, which will insure the 
longest lease of life, and the greatest measure of health." — Prov. Press. 

" A satisfactory treatise." — Indianapolis Sentinel. 

"Of especial interest and importance, and should be universally known." 
— Lutheran Observer. 

" Will be eagerly welcomed by thousands. The malady is one of a pe- 
culiarly insidious character, and* it may be asserted with confidence that 
this book will be verv valuable for medical men as well as laymen. It 
is written in good, plain English, and with clearness."— StoddarVs Review. 

"Simple, practical directions that can be easily obeyed."— Bookseller 
and Stationer. 

a The considerations presented in this little volume are of the greatest 
moment." — N. E. Journal of Education. 

"To those for whom it is designed, this manual can hardly fail to be a 
God-send."— Buffalo Courier. 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. JUST READY. 

CONSTIPATION. Plainly Treated and Relieved without the 
Use of Drugs. By Joseph F. Edwards. 16mo. Cloth. Price 75 centg. 



Select List of Books. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN in Health and 
Disease. By Mrs. Amie M. Hale, m.d. A book for Mothers. Second 
Edition. 12mo. Cloth. Price 50 cents. 

THE PRESS COMMEND IT AS FOLLOWS! 

"Altogether, it is a book which ought to be put into every baby basket, 
even if some lace-trimmed finery is left out, and should certainly stand on 
every nursery bureau." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

"Admirable coinraon-sense ad vice, wbich mothers would do well to have." 
— Southern Churchman. 

" Contains invaluable instruction."— Evening News, Detroit. 

" The importance of this book cannot be over estimated."— N. E. Journal 
of Education. 

" A work for mothers, full of wisdom." — Congregationalist. 

"Ought to be the means of saving many a young life." — Phila Inquirer. 

"Abounds in valuable information."— Therapeutic Gazette. 

" Emphatically a book for mothers, and cannot fail to be useful to all 
who read it." — Indiana Farmer. 

" Admirably simple, clear, sensible, and safe in its teachings." — Friends' 1 
Review. 

" It should be upon every household table." — Nashville Jour. Med. and Sur. 

BIBLE HYGIENE ; or, Health Hints. By a Physician. This 

book has been written, first, to impart in a popular and condensed form 
the elements of Hygiene. Second, to show how varied and important 
are the Health Hints contained in the Bible, and third, to prove that 
the secondary trendings of modern philosophy run in a parallel direction 
with the primary light of the Bible. 12mo. Cloth. Price $1.25. 

NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 

" The anonymous English author of this volume has written a decidedly 
readable and wholesome book." — Philadelphia Press. 

"The scientific treatment of the subject is quite abreast of the present 
day, and is so clear and free from unnecessary technicalities that readers 
of all classes may peruse it with satisfaction and advantage."— Edinburgh 
Medical Journal.' 

DRAINAGE FOR HEALTH; Or, Easy Lessons in Sanitary 

Science, with numerous Illustrations. By Joseph Wilson, m. d., Late 

Medical Director, United States Navy. One vol. Octavo. Price $1.00. 

" Dr. Wilson is favorably known as one of the leading American writers 

on hygiene and public health. The book deserves popularity."— Medical 

and Surgical Reporter. 

"Easily understood, and briefly and concisely presented." — Providence 
Journal. 

" Will be sure to be a harbinger of good in every family whose good for- 
tune it may be to possessa copy."— Builder and Wood Worker. 



Presley Blakiston's 



THE AMERICAN HEALTH PRIMERS. Edited by W. W. 
Keen, m.d. Bound in Cloth. Price 50 cents each. 
The Twelve Volumes, in Handsome Cloth Box, $6.00. 

I. Hearing and How to Keep It. With illustrations. By 
Ohas. H. Burnett, m.d., of Philadelphia, Aurist to the Presby- 
terian Hospital, etc. 
II. Long l<ife, and How to Reach It. By J. G-. Richardson, 
m.d., of Philadelphia, Professor of Hygiene in the University of 
Pennsylvania. 
III. The Summer and Its Diseases. By James C. Wilson, m.d., 
of Philadelphia, Lecturer on Physical Diagnosis in Jefferson 
Medical College. 
IV. Eyesight, and How to Care for It. With Illustrations. 
By George C. Harlan, m.d., of Philadelphia, Surgeon to the 
Wills (Eye.. Hospital. 
V. The Throat and the Voice. With illustrations. By J. 
Solis Cohen, m.d., of Philadelphia, Lecturer on Diseases of the 
Throat in Jefferson Medical College, etc. 
VI. The Winter and Its ©angers. By Hamilton Osgood, m.d., 
of Boston, Editorial Staff Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. 
VII. The Month and the Teeth. With illustrations. By J. W. 
White, m.d., d.d.s., of Philadelphia, Editor of the Dental 
Cosmos. 
VIII. Brain Work and Overwork. By H. C. Wood, Jr., m.d., 
of Philadelphia, Clinical Professor of Nervous Diseases in the 
"University of Pennsylvania, etc. 
IX. Our Homes. With illustrations. By Henry Hartshorne, 
m.d., of Philadelphia, formerly Professor of Hygiene in the 
University of Pennsylvania. 
X. The Skin in Health and Disease. By L. D. Bulkley, 
m.d., of New York, Physician to the Skin Department of the 
Demilt Dispensary and of the New York Hospital. 
XI. Sea Air and Sea Bathing. By John H. Packard, m.d., of 
Philadelphia, Surgeon to the Episcopal Hospital. 
XII. School and Industrial Hygiene. By D. F. Lincoln, m.d., 
of Boston, Mass., Chairman Department of Health, American 
Social Science Association. 

This series of American Health Primers is prepared to diffuse as widely 
and cheaply as possible, among all classes, a knowledge of the elementary 
facts of Preventive Medicine, and the bearings and applications of the 
latest and best researches in every branch of Medical and Hygienic Sci- 
ence. They are not intended (save incidentally) to assist in curing disease, 
but to teach people how to take care of themselves, their children, pupils, 
employe's, etc. 

They are written from an American standpoint, with especial reference 
to our Climate, Sanitary Legislation and Modes of Life ; and in these re- 
spects we differ materially from other nations. 



Select Lid of Books. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 

"As each little volume of this series has reached our hands we have 
found each in turn practical and well-written." — New York School Journal. 

11 Each volume of the 'American Health Primers' The Inter-Ocean has had 
the pleasure to commend. In their practical teachings, learning, and 
sound sense, these volumes are worthy of all the compliments they have 
received. They teach what every man and woman should know, and yet 
what nine-tenths of the intelligent class are ignorant of, or at best, have but 
a smattering knowledge of." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

"The series of American Health Primers deserves hearty commenda- 
tion. These handbooks of practical suggestion are prepared by men whose 
professional competence is beyond question, and. for the most part, by 
those who have made the subject treated the specific study of their lives. 
Such was the little manual on 'Hearing.' compiled by a well-known aurist, 
and we now have a companion treatise, in Eyesight and How to Care for It, 
by Dr. George C. Harlan, surgeon to the Wills Eye Hospital. The 
author has contrived to make his theme intelligible and even interesting 
to the young 1 by a judicious avoidance of technical language, and the 
occasional introduction of historical allusion. His simple and felicitous 
method of handling a difficult subject is conspicuous in the discussion 
of the diverse optical defects, both congenital and acquired, and 
of those injuries and diseases by which the eyesight maybe impaired or lost. 
We are of the opinion that this little work will prove of special utility to 
parents and all persons intrusted with the care of the eyes." — New York Sun. 

"The series of American Health Primers (now entirely completed) 
is presenting a large body of sound advice on various subjects, in a form 
which is at once attractive and serviceable. The several writers seem to 
hit the happy mean between the too technical and the too popular. They 
advise in a g'eneral way, without talking in such a manner as to make their 
readers begin to feel their own pulses, or to tinker their bodies without 
medical advice " — Sunday-school Times. 

"Brain Work and Overwork, by Dr. H. C. Wood, Clinical Professor of 
Nervous Diseases in the University of Pennsylvania, to city people, will 
prove the most valuable work of the -eries. It gives, in a condensed and 
practical form, just that information which is of such vital importance to 
sedentary men. It treats the whole subject of brain work and overwork, 
of rest, and recreation, and exercise in a plain and practical way. and yet 
with the authority of thorough and scientific knowledge. Nomas who 
values his health and his working power should fail to supply himself with 
this valuable little book."— State Gazette, Trenton, N.J. 

" An unexceptional household library."— Boston Journal of Chemistry. 

" Everv family should have the entire series; and every man, woman, 
and child should" carefully read each book." — Alabama Baptist. 

WATER ANALYSIS For Sanitary Purposes, With Hints for 
the Interpretation of Results. By E. Frakkland. ph.d., d.c.l. With 
Illustrations, Tables, etc , etc. 12mo. Cloth. $100. 
u The name of the author, who is a distinguished Chemist, and has had 
great experience in Sanitary matters, is a sufficient testimonial to its ac- 
curacy and its great practical value."— Boston Journal of Chemistry. 



Presley Blakistorvs 



WHAT TO DO FIRST in Accidents and Poisoning. By Charles 
W. Dulles, m.d. Illustrated. 18mo. Cloth. Price 50 cents. 

PREFACE. 

Whoever has seen how invaluable, in the presence of an accident, is the 
man or woman with a cool head, a steady hand, and some knowledge of 
what is best to be done, will not fail to appreciate the desirability of p Dssess- 
ing these qualifications. To have them in an emergency one must acquire 
them before it arises, and it is with the hope of aiding any who wish to 
prepare themselves for such demands upon their own resources that the 
following suggestions have been put together. 

OPINIONS. 

"Of special- practical value, and we commend it to all."— Lutheran Ob- 
server. 

" Ought to be in everybody's hands."— Times, Philadelphia. 

" Its usefulness entitles it to a wide and permanent circulation."— Boston 
Gazette. 

" Just the thing for an emergency."— Portland Transcript. 

" Of great practical value to the public."— Wisconsin State Journal. 

" A complete guide for sudden emergencies." — Philadelphia Ledger. 

"So plain and sensible that it ought to be introduced into every female 
seminary." — Evening Chronicle, Pittsburgh. 

"The suggestions are of priceless value." — The Traveler, Boston. 

" The book is invaluable." — Providence Press. 

EYESIGHT, GOOD AND BAD. The Preservation ofVision. 

By Robert Brudenel Carter, m.d., p.e.c.s. With many explanatory 

illustrations. 12mo. Cloth. Price SI. 50. 
peepace. 
A large portion of the time of every ophthalmia surgeon is occupied, day 
after day, in repeating to successive patients precepts and injunctions 
which ought to be universally known and understood. The following 
pages contain an endeavor to make these precepts and injunctions, and 
the reasons for them, plainly intelligible to those who are most concerned in 
their observance. 

WHAT IS THOUGHT OF IT. 

" A very valuable book, and should be in everybody's hands."— North 
American. 

" A valuable book for all who are interested in the best use and preser- 
vation of the vision."— N. E. Journal of Education. 

" A compact volume, full of information to all classes of people." — Book- 
seller and Stationer. 

•'A comprehensive treatise, well calculated to educate the public." — 
Kansas City Review. 

" Gives excellent advice." — Chicago Journal. 

"To teachers particularly the book is of interest and importance."— 
Educational Weekly. 



Select List of Books. 



HEALTH AND HEALTHY HOMES. A Guide to Personal 
and Domestic Hygiene. By George Wilson, m.a., m.d., Medical Officer 
of Health. Edited by Jos. G. Richardson, Professor of Hygiene at the 
University of Pennsylvania. 12mo. Cloth. 314 pp. Price $1.50. 

WHAT IT TELLS ABOUT. 

Howyour Body is Made. 

The Hereditary Influences, as well as the self-Induced and Social causes of Dis- 
ease. 

The Value and Choice of Food, its Preparation, and Sensible Hints on Diet. 

Proper and well Adapted Clothing. 

How to take Exercise, and the best Method of Training. 

Useful Hints about your Home. 

How to Prevent taking the Infectious Diseases which are always at certain seasons 
so prevalent in cities. 

All sorts of Important Suggestions in Regard to the Everyday Life. 

WHAT IS THOUGHT OF IT. 

" A most useful and, in every way, acceptable book."— N. York Herald. 

"Marked throughout by a sound, scientific spirit, and an absence of all 
hasty generalizations, sweeping assertions, and abuse of statistics in sup- 
port of the writer's particular views. . . . We cannot speak too 
highly of a work which we have read with entire satisfaction.' 5 — Medical 
Times and Gazette. 

" We warmly commend it to the public."— Boston Herald. 

" We have read few books of more interest and value than this."— South- 
ern Practitioner. 

" The book will take a permanent position. It is a sound work by a com- 
petent writer." — London Lancet. 

" Full of good sense and sound advice."— Educational Weekly. 

"The book aims at the prevention of Disease. It abounds in sensible 
suggestions, and will prove a reliable guide."— Churchman. 

" Deserves wide and general circulation."— Chi cago Tribune. 

WHAT EVERY MOTHER SHOULD KNOW. By Edward 
Ellis, m.d., Author of a Practical Manual on the Diseases of Children. 
16mo. Cloth. Price 75 cents. 

" As it is only too true that our children have to dodge through the early 
part of life as through a sort of pathological labyrinth, we must be thank- 
ful to meet with such a sensible guide for them as Dr. Ellis. He is emi- 
nently a practitioner among doctors, and a doctor among practitioners; 
that is to say, he is learned and well knows what is known, can do what 
should be done, and can put what he has to say in plain and comprehensive 
language."— Pall Mall Gazette. 

"The author has a faculty of sketching out the characteristics of dis- 
eases and their treatment hi striking outlines, and of making his points 
very clear and impressive." — N. Y. Medical Record. 



Presley Blakiston's Select List. 



DRUGS THAT ENSLAVE. The Opium, Morphine, Chloral, 

and Hashisch Habits. By H. H. Kane, m.d., of New York City. One 
volume. 12mo. With Illustrations. Price $1.50. 

A curse that is daily spreading, that is daily rejoicing in an increased 
number of victims, that entangles in its hideous meshes such great men as 
Coleridge, De Quincey, William Blair, Robert Hall, John Randolph, and 
William Wilberforce, besides thousands of others whose vice is unknown, 
should demand a searching and scientific examination. 

M A vivid and startling expose* of the increase of this form of intemper- 
ance, and the terrible sufferings endured by those trying to free them- 
selves from this habit." — Pittsburg Telegraph. 

" It is well that such a warning as is contained in this book should be 
sounded." — Albany Evening Journal. 

" The volume seems to be a summary of the results of the most approved 
practice, both in Europe and this country." — New York World. 

" A work of more than ordinary ability and careful research. . . . For 
the first time, reliable statistics on the use of chloral are classified and 
published. . . . And it is shown that the use of chloral causes a more 
complete and rapid ruin of mind and body than either opium or morphiDe." 
— Druggists' Circular and Gazette. 

" The effects of the habits described are set forth boldly and clearly, and 
the book must have a beneficial effect. It will do still better service in de- 
terring persons from experimenting 'to see what it is like.'" — Charleston 
(S. C.) News and Courier. 

"The subject of the chloral habit has not been investigated "by any one, 
we believe, so thoroughly as by Dr. Kane."— Medical Record. 

" There is ground for a new temperance movement here. The book is a 
valuable one. It is written in a practical manner, and has nothing of a 
sensational character."— Philadelphia Ledger. 

THE OCEAN AS A HEALTH RESORT. A handbook of 
Practical Information as to Sea Voyages, for the use of Tourists and 
Invalids. By Wm. S. Wilson, l.r.c.p.. Lond , m.r.c.s.e. With a 
Chart showing the Ocean Routes, and Illustrating the Physical Geo- 
graphy of the Sea. Crown 8vo. Price $2.50. 
Curative Effects of the Ocean Climate ; The Various Health Voyages ; 
Time of Starting; Choosing a Ship ; Preliminary Arrangements ; Lite at 
Sea; Climate and Weather ; Management of the Health at Sea; Occupa- 
tions and Amusements at Sea; Objects of Interest at Sea; End of the 
Voyage; Future Plans ; The Homeward Voyage ; Australia— Its Climate, 
Cities and Health Resorts; South Africa and its Climate; The Meteorol- 
ogy of the Ocean. Appendix A.— Outfit Required for a Voyage to Austra- 
lia. Appendix B. — Names and Addresses of some of the Principal Ship- 
ping Firms. 

"All the information is supplied by, or based upon, the actual experience 
of the author ; and the book may be confidently recommended to all who 
have to undertake, without previous experience, a sea voyage of any 
length. Medical men may consult it with advantage, and commend it to 
those patients whom they may advise to try the effect of a long voyage at 
sea." — Med. Times and Gazette. 

' ; We have read every page of this book, and have derived both instruc- 
tion and amusement." — Lancet. 



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